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Army-led ‘clearance operations’ have driven 700,000 Rohingya into Bangladesh, carrying with them widespread accounts of atrocities by Myanmar police and troops

13 September 2018 - 12:38
Agency Staff

Myanmar’s state counselor, Aung San Suu Kyi, speaks at the World Economic Forum on Asean at the National Convention Center in Hanoi, Vietnam, on September 13 2018. Picture: REUTERS/KHAM

Hanoi — On Thursday, Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi robustly defended the jailing of two Reuters journalists reporting on the Rohingya crisis, as she hit back at global criticism of a trial widely seen as an attempt to muzzle the free press.

The country’s de facto leader acknowledged that the brutal crackdown on the Muslim minority — which the UN has cast as "genocide" — could have been "handled better", but insisted the two reporters have been treated fairly. "They were not jailed because they were journalists" but because "the court has decided that they had broken the Official Secrets Act", she said.

Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo were each imprisoned for seven years last week for breaching the country’s hardline Official Secrets Act while reporting on atrocities committed during the military crackdown in Rakhine state.

Suu Kyi, once garlanded as a global rights champion, has come under intense pressure to use her moral force inside Myanmar to defend the pair.

Challenging critics of the verdict — including the UN, rights groups who once lionised her, and the US vice-president — to "point out" where there has been a miscarriage of justice, Suu Kyi said the case upheld the rule of law. "The case was held in open court ... I don’t think anybody has bothered to read the summary of the judge," she said during a discussion at the World Economic Forum, adding that the pair still had the right to appeal.

Widespread atrocities

Her comments drew an indignant response from rights groups who have urged the Nobel Laureate to press for a presidential pardon for the reporters.

"Open courts are designed to shed light on the justice process," said Sean Bain of the International Commission of Jurists. "Sadly, in this case, we’ve seen both institutional and individual failings to hold up the principles of rule of law and human rights."

Army-led "clearance operations" that started last August drove 700,000 Rohingya into Bangladesh, carrying with them widespread accounts of atrocities — rape, murder and arson — by Myanmar police and troops.

The ferocity of that crackdown has thrust Myanmar into a firestorm of criticism as Western goodwill evaporates towards a country ruled by a ruthless junta until 2015. A UN fact-finding panel has called for Myanmar army chief Min Aung Hlaing and several other top generals to be prosecuted for genocide. The International Criminal Court (ICC) has said it has jurisdiction to open an investigation, even though Myanmar is not a member of the tribunal.

Suu Kyi, who has bristled at foreign criticism of her country, on Thursday softened her defence of the crackdown against "terrorists" from the Muslim minority. "There are of course ways [in] which, in hindsight, the situation could have been handled better."

But she also appeared to turn responsibility onto neighbouring Bangladesh for failing to start the repatriation of the nearly 1-million-strong Rohingya refugee community to Myanmar. Bangladesh "was not ready" to start repatriation of the Rohingya in January as agreed under a deal between the two countries, she said.

Yet Myanmar does not want its Rohingya, denying them citizenship while the Buddhist-majority public falsely label them "Bengali" interlopers. Rohingya refugees refuse to return to Myanmar without guarantees of safety, restitution for lost lands and citizenship.

The jailing of the Reuters reporters has sent a chill through Myanmar’s nascent media scene. The pair has denied the charges, insisting they were set up while exposing the extrajudicial killing of 10 Rohingya Muslims in the village of Inn Din in September last year.

This week, the UN rights office accused Myanmar of "waging a campaign against journalists". It decried the use of the courts and the law by the "government and military in what constitutes a political campaign against independent journalism".

A UN panel is set to release the second part of its report into the atrocities over the coming days.